Why did I cry this time in the rain

Why did I cry this time in the rain?

Am sure when I lied I was seventeen then.

Reading the very title of this piece people who know me will laugh. I'm a bit prodigal when it comes to my tears. What new can there be if I cry, only this time when it rained?

Today was like any other day. With the heat surging this morning discomfort was etched on every human face visible around. We all waited for the clouds to darken. A brief meeting with friends and the usual fun that comes with it was subtly refreshing. The gleeful Amrita and funny Jb can always make me laugh in spite of the lingering torture that the weather imposed. Then again what are friends for, if not this? The evening came putting stillness within the leaves. I wondered as if a certain senility has gripped the surrounding nature. Something needed to be released. Unsure of the what, I retraced my way back home. The journey was accompanied by those questions of tomorrow which have become prosaic by now. Their regularity in attendance has made me take them for granted. As if it did not bother anymore, the great dilemma between what I am doing and what I am meant to do. The quest for who I am appeared tiring for a while. It too did not matter. And much like the trail of polluted air behind a moving vehicle, all of them followed me, making the wind a wee more heavy.

Darkness arrived when the thoughts were wiped off along with the oppressive languor. For a change black brought hope to my eyes. I was exhilarated because I knew it would rain. Seated at the balcony I revised an old habit, stretching my hand out of the grilled apertures to welcome the first showers of the season. The wind has gone crazy by then and its random blows immersed me into an inebriety of a kind I am scared of. Just when everything was reaching the acme of perfection along a steady acclivity, I realized that it was not raining yet. The vagueness of mild drizzle failed to soothe a thirsty crow. I kept on stretching my hand in a broken expectation. It was then that I felt the pain and cried.

Initially it would show itself through slight tremors and then it churned my inside which sounded much like an empty vessel. The memoirs I have written till yesterday creaked open their yellow pages. The faces I have loved and lost were drawn on them. They smiled at me. I know I can never outgrow them, I wish not to. And there was a wretched stack of what I knew and what I knew not. Memory and oblivion displayed the virgin dreams and the deeper I trod through them, the road would just keep growing. The apparitions appeared soon enough to wipe the gush of water flowing down my eyes. Lassitude I suppose was what held me then. The pain had taken a definite turn by that time as it brought before me the things that ended ages ago. The last game of chess with my brother opened a field of thorns before the bosom full of void and as my legs bled due to their sting a paper boat sailed to me. It took me to the afternoon she lost the light in her eyes. But then my grandmother was right there with the smile which evened out her wrinkles. And when the sweeping imageries made the wait unbearable,

“The rain fell slow, down on all the roofs of uncertainty
I thought of you and the years and all the sadness fell away from me”

Thank God my life is not ‘Floyd’-less or whatever, you know what I mean. The monsoon drenched every vista spread before sight as it gave the surrounding a longed serenity, whose need even I failed to fathom. The years went away and so did the sadness. Suddenly the music which came from the constant downpour had an uncanny similarity to the one which strummed out of the chords of his guitar. He whose love I would never lose in spite of failing to promises made to me. The rains were mystic. Though my oneness to a certain deity seated light years above can be debatable, I did feel united to my love. The brittle faith will be reformed soon I knew. With the fragrance of wet soil enriching my senses, I found a reason to rejoice. I had a love that supports me through emancipation. It reminds me of friendships which embrace the flawed human deep down. What it gave me was not just shelter to my puerile mistakes but fortitude to endure these crippling maladies. I knew I could go on when he was by my side. As the clouds over my cup of tea dispelled, the rain finally ceased to cry.

The sky had a redness of wine mingled with the usual black. Then as silence filled the space that was vacant a thrill touched me. It was a pain indeed, what I felt all the while. No, I will not give it a sudden transformation to pleasure. It came from the depths of the blue skies to ache every corner of my heart not to indulge in sadism at my plight but to relieve me from an unseen bondage. As if, it was a latent epiphany which rejuvenated not for its own sake but to wake me up. Sometimes it is good to get hurt.

Yes I cried this time in the rain

And I did that as I was in pain

The pendulum in my room kept swinging between past and present.